Dead Low Tide, page 14
“Ah—Marian is out and I haven’t seen any of the children around, so they must be out, too. Would you—ah—care for a drink?”
“No, thanks, Mr. Constanto. This is—well, a business matter, I guess you’d call it.”
“Then come right in here. This is my den.”
He turned on the desk lamp. It wasn’t what I would call a den. It looked as austere as his office in the bank. He sat uncertainly behind the desk and put his sharp elbows on the desk.
“I suppose,” he said, “it is something about John. A tragic loss to the community, Mr. McClintock. Tragic. A very—ah—old and beloved friend. You understand, of course, that I’m not authorized to give you confidential information. Financial affairs. That sort of thing.”
“This isn’t directly about John’s financial affairs, Mr. Constanto. I have reason to believe that someone has been blackmailing Mary Eleanor. I thought you might help me confirm that by telling me—off the record, of course—whether she had access to any money.”
“Couldn’t you ask her?”
“People being blackmailed don’t talk too readily.”
“How does it become your business?”
“You can’t live in this town without knowing that I was jailed, released, and I’m still under suspicion. I think the blackmail ties in with the murder. And I’m interested in clearing myself.”
“Why not go to the police and let them investigate?”
“And find out why and how Mary Eleanor was being blackmailed and make it public? Get it in the papers and over the radio, maybe?”
“I—ah—see. A certain moral responsibility.”
He then looked me directly in the eyes. I knew at once that it had never happened to me before, and I guessed also that he seldom looked anybody directly in the eye. His eyes were a singularly pale clear cold blue, and they were as merciless as bookkeeping machinery, or a tax table. He looked away quickly, but once you had looked into those eyes you understood a lot of things. How the brown wife was won. Why the kids were exceptionally well behaved. How, precisely, he had come up from nothing. You saw how much there was behind that vagueness, how much ambition and arrogance and cold willfulness.
He made a tent of his fingers. “You—ah—understand that if I had known her reason, I would never have assisted her.”
“Of course.”
“Her security, naturally was her stock in John Long, Contractors, Incorporated. Not listed, of course. Not readily marketable. She was evasive as to why she needed the money. She led me to assume that it was for a purchase of land. Speculative, of course. To be a surprise to her husband. Something like that. She wished to use her holdings as collateral for a bank loan. However, I explained to her that it could not be kept a secret from her husband in that case, as he was a director of the bank, and all loans of the size of what she had in mind have to be taken up at the meetings. If John did not happen to attend that one, he would certainly hear about it. That upset her. Then I—ah—suggested, purely as a favor, of course, an alternate suggestion.”
“What was that?”
“I agreed to loan her the money she required, and accept a temporary assignment of the stock holdings as collateral for a personal loan, which no one had to know about, of course. It was—ah—handled in that manner. It took me several days to raise what she required in cash. Thirty thousand. A month later she required another ten. I managed that for her. About a month ago she wanted ten more. I told her I had gone as far as I cared to go on that amount of collateral. She was more than a bit—unpleasant about it.”
“If she was paying off someone, she couldn’t hope to repay the loan, then.”
“I don’t see how she could. I imagine it was a case of either letting me become the owner of the holding, or else informing John. Of course now she’ll have no trouble. After taxes there’ll be a decent estate. In fact a—ah—small group of which I am one plan to make a firm offer for John’s controlling interest in the firm. That Key Estates project looks healthy—quite healthy. John planned well. A pity he couldn’t live to see it completed.”
“Mr. Constanto, I would think that if you were such a good friend of John’s, you’d have told him about his wife wanting all that money in cash.”
The blue eyes swung on their turrets and aimed at me and for a moment I thought he was going to fire when ready, but he turned, instead, to vagueness, to his apologetic manner. He said, “Ah, in retrospect, yes. We’re always—wise, after the fact, aren’t we?”
You couldn’t pin him down any further, any more than you can drive nails with a wet dishrag. It was obvious that he’d been delighted to buy for forty thousand a thirty per cent interest in a healthy firm that stood to net a very chubby figure from Key Estates. He was an admired and respected local citizen, and yet he gave me the same feeling you get when you run your face through a cobweb.
“I appreciate your telling me this, Mr. Constanto.”
“Once you stated your interest, I felt it was my moral obligation to inform you, Mr. McClintock. I hope it will—assist you in your difficulties.”
He walked me gravely and politely to the door. He said, “Perhaps it would be wise for me to give the police the same information, Mr. McClintock. I should not like to be accused of withholding information that might be of interest to them. Yet, by the same token, I do not wish to cause Mrs. Long any—any difficulty.”
“Why don’t you wait a day or so?”
“If you—ah—recommend it, I shall.”
When I drove away I saw him, tall, stooped, framed in the doorway. He would fix your drink, carry your bundles, call you a cab, cash your check, buy your lunch. He was a very obliging kind of man. You were always seeing his name in the paper—as pall bearer.
Now Joe had another facet. Forty thousand dollars had been added.
Fourteen
IT WAS AFTER NINE, and I felt vaguely uncomfortable and couldn’t decide why until I remembered that breakfast was the only meal I’d had. On impulse I drove out to the restaurant where Joy had worked.
I guess every state in the country is infected with them—greasy-spoon restaurants on the fringe of town. Red imitation leather, badly cracked, on the counter stools. Weary pie behind glass. A stink of frying grease in front, and tired garbage in back. Sway-backed, heavy-haunched waitresses with metallic hair, puffed ankles, and a perennial snarl. A decent toss of one of the water glasses would fell a steer. A jukebox and plastic booths and today’s special is chicken croquettes, with fr. fr. pot. and st. beans—ninety-fi’ cents. And the coffee is like rancid tar.
There were a couple of morose men, who looked like unsuccessful salesmen, sitting at the counter shoveling burned fat into their maltreated stomachs. I sat in a booth. Their evening rush, if any, had cleared out. Three waitresses sat in a booth. One of them got up reluctantly and slobbed over to me and tossed a menu in front of me.
She was a slat thin blonde with improbable breasts, which looked as real as a display soda in a drugstore window. She had a hacksaw face and mean little eyes.
I tried to smile at her, and said, “Is Joy around?”
“Her—she quit. She’s gone back into office work. She’s smart. She got off her feet. You want something?”
I found one item on the menu that I didn’t think they could spoil. I ordered it and she brought it quickly. They hadn’t spoiled it, but they’d come close.
She brought my coffee, and said, “You been in here before, I guess. I figured you looked familiar, kind of.”
Far be it from me to tell her she’d seen me in the paper. “I’ve been in before. Have you been here long?”
“A lifetime, mister.”
“If you want to get off your feet, why don’t you bring some coffee and sit down and keep me company.”
She glanced at the other booth with the two waitresses in it. She looked with feral quickness and intentness toward the counter. She said, barely moving her lips, “In a minute. The boss is out back. He takes off soon now. When I see his car go down the drive, I can. But until he goes, it could get me in trouble.”
She went back to the other booth. I heard them whispering over there. I heard some giggles. One girl went elaborately over to the counter for nothing at all. She straightened a metal napkin dispenser, turned around and studied me intently as she walked back to the booth. I listened for the gasps, but I just heard more giggling. They hadn’t recognized me yet.
Just as I finished my meal, a car went down the driveway. One of the girls said, quite audibly, “Good night, Frankie, you big bastard. Sweet dreams.”
The blonde brought coffee over and sat across from me and looked arch. “I’m Cindy.”
“I’m Andy.”
“Hi, Andy.”
“Hi, Cindy.” A sparkling routine.
“Jeez, my feet. He keeps yakking about a new kinda floor. But nothing ever changes in this joint. The floor is like rocks. You ought to walk on it all day.”
“I guess it’s worth it, though, isn’t it? The tips and all.”
Her laugh was a startling explosive bray, which she rendered without changing expression. “Tips? Here? Man, what you take to have those big happy dreams?”
“I always have happy dreams. I dreamed I was going to eat here and have a date with Joy.”
“I guess you don’t know her so good, Andy. Maybe some people would say she’s pretty. I guess maybe she is. But she don’t date. She’s colder than a witch’s—oops, I don’t know you that good. Yet.” The last word was drawled, though the rest was from Hamtramck.
“Didn’t she date anybody?”
“You know something, Andy, I never could figure that girl. We had this dishwasher, see? I mean a real moody guy. Bright, kind of, and a lot of the time you’d figure he was laughing at you. Funny to have a punk washing dishes laughing at you and you don’t know why. This was better than six months ago, see? In March, I guess it was, and, oh God, are we busy. People waiting to eat in this dump, can you imagine? So she eats here twice. And without no permission or nothing, the second time she come here, she goes charging right out in the kitchen, and the manager finds her out there, nose to nose with that Ken, the dishwasher, and them talking in low nasty voices to each other. See, she must have known he was working here. He’d been on for a couple of months. Well, he tells her—the manager I mean—that she’s got to get out of the kitchen, and she steps up and asks him for a job. We need girls and he takes her on, and honest to God, she was green as beans. She kept getting all fouled up and, see, we had to get her straightened out on orders and things, and everybody in here busy as a college girl in a—oops, I still don’t know you good enough, Andy. Anyway, she catches on fast and she does her share of the dirty work, and pretty soon she’s a good waitress. We couldn’t figure out what it was with the two of them. He had an old beat-up car, and sometimes after work they’d go off in it. But always acting kind of sore at each other. We kind of hinted around, but she wouldn’t say anything. We tried to get her off on dates, but, no sir, not Joy. We’re closed on Tuesdays here, and one Tuesday I even get the guy, this Ken, see, to take me out. I figured I could find out from him whether they were married, those two, or something like that, and he run out on her and she found him again, and took the job so she could be close enough to needle him or something. Anyway, he picks me up in that beat car. I live just down the road in that Glory-Bee Court, Gawd what a foul dump, but it’s handy being so close by, and we’re going swimming, see? I don’t really like the guy. He gives me the creeps. He really does. I find out he doesn’t want nothing to do with any public beach. Not him. Not good enough for him, I guess. On the way he keeps talking over my head. Smart stuff. Confusing me and making me sore. He goes over there where the big houses are, over there where it’s all private beach, and there’s one of those big houses empty, and he goes right in the driveway and parks, bold as anything, and he tells me he always swims there, and if somebody moves in, he’ll find another empty house and do the same thing. He has busted the door of the cabana on the beach, and we change in there, but he doesn’t get fresh or anything, like I thought maybe he would, and wished he would because, see, I had a big yen to smack him down good for all the wise talk. Well, he gets his swimming pants on and I see right off he’s a real well-built guy, which I figured he was anyway, and he goes strutting down the beach and we spread the blanket and open some beer and he waves at people. I ask him how he knows them. He says he tells them he’s the owner’s friend, and if you do things bold, nobody stops you. It certainly made me nervous, and I kept wondering if the cops found us if I’d be in trouble too on account of busting into that cabana. He says he’s making a lot of friends around there and he said if they knew what his line of work was, they’d drop their teeth. We swam and I’m a no-good swimmer, believe me, and boys usually help me in the water, but that lunk just swam out about forty miles and left me splashing around alone for a hell of a long time. When he comes back and we’re drinking beer I try to wiggle some info out of him about Joy. But he’s like clams, see. And like he’s laughing at me. It got me sore. I drank a terrible big amount of beer, especially when he was way down the beach talking to people and he wouldn’t let me come, like he was ashamed of me or something, and him only a dishwasher, the nerve! When I drink beer I always get terrible sleepy, so don’t you feed me beer tonight, sugar, because I go out like lights. I can leave here pretty soon now and there’s a real cute place about a mile down the road. It’s just juke for dancing, but Gawd, I’d dance to a guy playing a paper comb if it come to that and there was nothing else. But to get back to that Ken—oh, Jeez, how he griped me. I go to sleep right there on the blanket and the funniest damn thing, I get a bad dream about drowning in the water, and I open my eyes and there are his eyes looking right down into mine, and at first I think maybe it is a pass and I get a chance to slap him down like I wanted to because he talked so wise to me, see, like I was ignorant or something, but it isn’t that. It isn’t no pass, Andy. It’s just the fingers on my throat and him looking down at me. Gawd, have I had dreams about that! I didn’t even dare twitch. Him looking at me like he was one of those professors looking down at a bug and wondering where to stick the pin through, I tell you, I was all through, right there. Then all of a sudden he takes his hand away and gives a little shrug like I wasn’t worth sticking a pin through, like I was a dull kind of bug not worth collecting. He says we better go and I say we better had, and I feel a lot better when he’s ten feet away, believe me. Still there’s no pass, and he brings me back and he doesn’t even want to come in for a drink. Well, it was maybe—let me see—May? Early in May, I guess, he quits. No notice—no nothing. Frankie popped a couple guts, believe you me. Joy gets awful quiet-like, but she keeps on working. We figured he blew town. Then a good customer of mine who knows him by sight tells about seeing him driving one of those new little foreign-type cars. So you know how I got it figured out? She worked here until she could get a better job because she knew he was still in town, see. And I bet he got himself some rich babe he met on that beach, and she’s keeping him because, like I said, he’s a pretty well-built fella, and that would be just his style. He always acted like he was too good for dishwashing. And a guy like that, I mean a guy who’ll bust into places like that, he just doesn’t give a damn. My God, the coffee is terrible tonight. Honey, let’s you drive me to my place and I’ll change and I got a bottle there, and then we can go dancing. It isn’t air conditioned there but it’s cool.”
“What was Ken’s last name?”
“God knows. I don’t even think Frankie knew. He just walked in one day when Frankie had a sign in the window about a dishwasher, and he was always going to get his social security number looked up or something, and he never did, even though Frankie kept after him.”
“Where did he live when he worked here?”
“Down the line some place. Somebody said, I forget who, that he was in a shack on one of the islands in the bay. Some little island where you got to wade across the flats to get to it, and I guess that’s right because he was always coming in with his shoes soaked in the morning. I bet you he’s moved off that island now. I bet he’s living up with some rich bag in one of those big houses. I don’t know why a girl like Joy would want to toss herself away on a bum type like that. I can shove off now. Gee, maybe you don’t like dancing. My place is sort of crumby, and all the movies stink. I looked them up. You know, Monday night is sort of like a weekend to me, the way we’re closed Tuesdays. I mean I can sleep all day, and I usually do because I’m up all night. That is, if you don’t feed me beer. Then I get awful dopey and I’m no good to anybody, but I bet you aren’t the type of fella buys beer.”
She stood up, and one of the other girls said, “Have a good time, honey.”
I had been just about to apply the brush-off, but it suddenly seemed too bad to make that much of a dent in her pride. I decided, to save her face, that I’d leave with her and then apply the brush-off at her place.
I paid the check, and we went out and got in the car. The grease smell was caught in her hair. I could detect it when we were inside the car. I started up and swung out into the road and headed for Glory-Bee Court.
“What do you usually do Monday nights?”
“Oh, when I don’t have a date—that doesn’t happen often, see—well, I go on down to that cute place I was telling you about. There’s a gang of nice kids goes there. We have a lot of laughs and play some table shuffleboard, and you ought to see Bernie the bartender do imitations. Honest to God, his Charles Boyer is a riot.”
I turned into the floodlit driveway of Glory-Bee. “The one on the end. It’s more private-like. Of course when the season starts, I got to move back into town because the prices go way up in the courts. What’s this? Pictures, hey.”
I tried to snatch them but I was too late. She had the top picture turned toward the floodlights. She slid them slowly back into the envelope. She turned slowly to face me as she placed the envelope between us. Her voice was entirely different. “Where’s your camera, you bum?”
